WHERE: Flemington Racecourse, Naarm/Melbourne VIC
WHEN: Friday December 2nd, 2022
REVIEW: Ellie Robinson
PHOTO: Britt Andrews
Of all the smaller rock and metal festivals to crop up in this post-Soundwave landscape, none have come as close to matching that uniquely youthful, colour-drenched and adrenalised atmosphere as Good Things (which makes sense; organised by much of its alumni, it’s more or less a spiritual successor to Soundwave). Having been sidelined for the past three years – y’know, for obvious reasons – the festival made its grand return to Flemington Racecourse on Friday December 2nd, sporting a lineup that more than made up for its forced hiatus (even if a handful of the acts billed had to ditch it at the last second due to visa problems).
Walking through the gates – our free (and duly appreciated) Red Bull gripped tightly – elation bounded through the festival site. Early-rising daredevils yelped with excited terror from the carnival lines, while others made sure the merch lines were consistently brutal from the moment they started. The site itself, too, was lined with a rainbow of food trucks doling out every cuisine imaginable – easily the best spread we’d ever seen at a music festival, even taking into account those that explicitly brand themselves as foodie-centric.
Over on Stage 5 (see: the obligatory “small stage” tucked away at the furthermost corner of the festival site), technical difficulties wreaked havoc, leading to an otherwise meticulous schedule being thrown into disarray. While at most other festivals, bands would bear the brunt of this with shortened sets and rushed changeovers, Good Things proved to a lot more lax – Ocean Grove took to the stage around 20 minutes late, but played for the full half-hour they were billed with.
The biggest downside of the schedule’s shift was that many punters missed the best performance of the day, from the genre-bending force that is Nova Twins. Fresh off the jet from London, the pair tore through their set of colourful punk-hop scorchers with vicious and infectiously buoyant aplomb, uniting the festival’s most diverse (and fashionable) crowd for a riotous celebration of individuality. At no point during the performance could we anticipate Nova Twins’ next move: while singer and guitarist Amy Love shredded on her Mustang like her life depended on it, bassist Georgia South was tap-dancing on her pedalboard – and utilising a Hot Hand MIDI ring (a f***ing game-changer if we’ve ever seen one) – to deliver analogue bass drops in the vein of In Silico-era Pendulum.
Equally spellbinding were TISM, another act for those of us with nostalgic tastes and, clad in shimmering silver mylar jumpsuits (with enormous helium balloons protruding from their heads), by far the festival’s most visually striking. Officially reunited after 18 long, painful years, the band did well to remind us exactly why they were such a cultural powerhouse in their heyday, blazing through a stacked catalogue of hits like ‘Whatareya?’, ‘Greg! The Stop Sign!!’ and ‘(He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River’. Amid all the raw comedy and visual gags, it was almost surprising just how great the band sounded on their own merits – Ron Hitler-Barassi’s pipes were in tip-top shape, and new guitarist Vladimir Lenin-McCartney downright stunned with his Tele in clutch.
NOFX recently announced that 2023 would be their last year as an active touring band, so their late-arvo set was one of the most highly anticipated. Not only was it likely the last-ever time the punk legends would perform in Melbourne, but it was also their second time ever playing Punk In Drublic in its entirety. That part, the band were clearly less stoked than us about, making several quips about their lack of enthusiasm as the hour unfolded. They got the job done, though, riffing through deep cuts like ‘Fleas’, ‘Happy Guy’ and ‘Dig’ for the first time in some eight years, and throwing in a couple of bonus treats like First Ditch Effort highlight ‘Six Years On Dope’ and a cover of Mark Curry’s ‘Perfect Government’.
Visibly disgruntled yet still putting on a ripper show, NOFX were the inverse of Deftones. The latter alt-metal pioneers thrashed with visceral passion – Stephen Carpenter in particular, laying waste to his fretboard with the meticulous tact other players would sell their souls for – and although Chino Moreno’s energy waned quickly, he powered through fatigue to deliver a vocal performance nothing short of transcendental. But with a combination of his nonexistent stage presence, the occasional rhythmic hiccup and a godawful mix, their set overall was a bit of a mess. The lattermost gripe was our biggest – even standing just a dozen or so metres from the stage, Deftones’ sound was muddy and washed out, lyrics barely comprehensible under the avalanche of compression.
Those aural quandaries only worsened for Bring Me The Horizon, whose headlining set was entirely derailed by a mix we can only describe aptly as dogshit. Punters whispering to their friends sounded more coherent, with the band’s two Matts – drummer Nicholls and bassist Kean – being the only members spotlit in our corner of the soundscape (just right of the mixing desk, where the sound is supposed to be at its sharpest). We hardly caught a minute of Oli Sykes’ actual vocals, with the frontman completely drowned out by his chanting disciples; this wound up being one of our highlights, though, as rapturous singalongs to hits like ‘Happy Song’ and ‘Shadow Moses’ brought to our cluster of the crowd a poignant sense of community.
The setlist as a whole drew exclusively of the newer half of Bring Me The Horizon’s catalogue, with the oldest tracks coming from 2013’s Sempiternal. It celebrated the band’s recent foray into industrial experimentalism, delivered as a conceptual play-of-sorts flanked by Matrix-inspired interludes and visual accoutrements. ‘Die4U’ and ‘Strangers’ were highlights, hinting at a bright future for Sykes and co. as they put the finishing touches on their second Post Human record. They treated us to five songs from the first chapter (Survival Horror), too, with the one-two punch of ‘Dear Diary’ and ‘Parasite Eve’ landing with particular force. As much as their sound team cooked it, we must admit, we still had a blast watching Bring Me The Horizon close out a stellar day of live music.
